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Why We’re Moving 184 Videos over to LeadPlayer

When your blog is small, switching to a new video player is no big deal.

You install the new plugin, change the embed codes in a few posts, deactivate the old plugin, and you’re done.

When you’ve got 184 videos spread across 500+ posts and pages on half a dozen different WordPress installations, though, it’s a HUGE deal.

You have to catalogue all the places where you’ve got videos running off of the old plugin.

You have to install the new plugin, and make sure it doesn’t conflict with any other technology that could result in a service interruption affecting hundreds of people.

You have to migrate the code for all 184 of those videos – a task that will take a significant number of hours, or cost a significant amount of money to outsource.

Not to mention the things that might go wrong, that you didn’t even think of before starting.

In spite of all that, though, as part of a redesign and general systems upgrade that we’re working on, we’re currently in the process of migrating all 184 of those videos over to LeadPlayer.

Here’s why we’re doing it, and why you might want to do the same…

It’s Probably NOT What You Think…

The funny thing is that LeadPlayer is a pretty awesome plugin with tons of amazing features that Clay and his team are all very proud of… and we aren’t switching over for ANY of them.

Now, don’t get me wrong – some of the features really are amazing;

You can add calls to action inside your videos (i.e. a “click here” button right on the video)

You can add opt-in forms right inside the video (no need to click away!)

You can set the buttons and forms to appear at the beginning, middle, or end, and you can choose whether the viewer has to act on them or not

LeadPlayer is smart enough to know not to show a Call to Action to someone who’s already seen it, without filtering them out of the target list for OTHER call to actions

You can tell the plugin to override your individual buttons and forms, and point all of your videos to the same offer (if you’re running a promotion on a particular day, for example)

And that isn’t even all of it. Pretty cool, right?

Except that, as great as all that sounds (and as excited as I am to start using some of those features in the coming weeks), the truth is that we’re switching over to LeadPlayer to solve a much simpler, and much bigger, problem with video…

The Two Biggest Video Conversion Killers

When it comes to video, the two biggest conversion killers are pretty straight-forward:

If people can’t watch your video

If they get distracted from your message

And the solution would seem to be pretty straight-forward; make sure people can watch your video, with minimum distractions.

Well, yeah, that’s great in theory, but it’s easier said than done.

At a high level, you have two options for your videos – you can put them on YouTube, or you can host them yourself (on your own servers, or on Amazon S3) and run them through a player plugin of some kind (like Flowplayer, for example).

Each of these two options has a very serious problem, though:

If you put the videos on YouTube, then you know that everyone can see them, regardless of whether they’re on a PC, Mac, iDevice (iPhone, iPad, etc.), or Android phone or tablet. So far so good – but the trouble is that when the video ends, the viewer is bombarded by all sorts of related videos that they might want to watch… and if they click on the video, it’ll take the video traffic off your site and over to YouTube!

The result of all this distraction is that conversions will be cut down to a fraction of what they might otherwise be.

Bummer. 🙁

And the alternative is just as bad, but for different reasons:

If you host videos yourself and run them through a player, you can control the environment; no distractions, no links to places you don’t want people to go – just your message, loud and clear. Which is great, right? Except that with just about every player I’ve seen, you’ll have massive compatibility issues with iDevices and Androids – which means that, on average, about a third of the people who try to watch your video won’t be able to see it.

Double bummer. 🙁

How Clay and LeadPlayer Saved my A$$

Now, as you know, we’ve been running videos on Mirasee for quite a while.

We’ve done a series of video lessons.

I made 37 videos answering questions from readers.

I created another 40+ videos answering more marketing questions when I launched Naked Marketing.

So yeah, a lot of videos. Which means we must have already had something in place to accommodate it all, right?

Well, yes and no.

The videos were scattered across YouTube, Flowplayer, and a third system that purported to do everything I needed, except that it came with a monthly fee (that they tried to raise on me without any warning), and even though it had the word “Easy” in the name, I can’t tell you how many emails I exchanged with their tech support people.

So yeah – we were losing A LOT of conversions on those videos.

Then I got on Skype with Clay, to have a conversation about something totally unrelated, and he said “Dude, have you tried LeadPlayer yet?”

I had a brief face-palming moment, and said I’d try it right away.

We piloted it on Write Like Freddy, and now we’re migrating all of our videos over to LeadPlayer.

And honestly, I couldn’t be happier.

In addition to a great player and a smooth experience for our viewers, I get all these cool marketing bells and whistles to play with.

And most importantly, the basics all work – there are no distractions, and the videos play on all devices. Woohoo! 🙂

So… Will You Grab LeadPlayer? 😉

Okay, let’s put all the cards on the table.

Obviously, I’m sharing all of this with you because I think that – if you’re using video, or planning to – LeadPlayer would be a great investment for you with your blog.

And I really mean it – it isn’t like we do product reviews here all the time… in fact, I don’t think we’ve *ever* done one before… unless I’m forgetting something obscure from the very early days of Mirasee. 😉

I’m doing this review today because I think this is a truly excellent product that has solved an ENORMOUS problem for us – and I think it can do the same for you, too.

Which is why I think you should get it. 🙂

Okay… that about wraps things up.

If you’ve got any questions, leave a note in the comments, and let us know – maybe I can even get Clay to stop by and answer some of them! 😉

About Danny Iny

Danny Iny (@DannyIny) is the CEO and founder of Mirasee, host of the Business Reimagined podcast, and best-selling author of multiple books including Engagement from Scratch!, The Audience Revolution, and Teach and Grow Rich.

28 thoughts on “Why We’re Moving 184 Videos over to LeadPlayer”

Straight up, Clay’s brilliant, your brilliant, I love you both big time, and though I’ve yet to use it, I truly feel LeadPlayer’s revolutionizing the video/marketing field, I’m not surprised you’re singing it praises.

hi Danny, this looks great – especially as there are no video hosting fees 🙂
One question – if you embed the optin buttons etc into a you-tube video, I am guessing they only work if the video is embedded outside of you-tube, not on you-tube itself?
Thanks, and see you on the call later 🙂

Clay, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before even Google bows down to your marketing authority!
P.S. I just watched that video – it is so point-and-click, it is genius thanks 🙂
I especially love the ability to be a little bit less ‘aggressive’ in going for the opt-in, so I LOVE the ‘skip this step’ feature. I personally hate being told ‘opt-in or leave’… I am more likely to choose the latter, just cos I am so annoyed!

If you have control over opt in buttons etc of your video on your website that is great but does that mean that your video on Youtube is ‘open’?

Can leadplayer be used with ‘private’ or ‘unlisted’ youtube videos?

And lastly but related to the above: Youtube has lots of traffic which makes having your videos on Youtube beneficial. But it seems you cannot benefit from both the traffic and Leadplayer features at the same time? Is that correct?

Wow Danny, what a great review of this product. I’m not a big review person either but when I know a product is good, I’ll definitely share it with my readers.

I love YouTube I admit but I would love to have more flexibility with my videos and this one sounds fabulous. I’ll definitely look into this one. Thanks so much for sharing this and Clay’s course is SO worth the price of this plug-in.

Man you two are so on to it! You know where I am before I do I swear. Danny’s that impressive. I just arrived back yesterday afternoon. Off to use LeadPlayer on my $100 Change video that you’re both change makers in!

I’m brand-new to videos for my blog. Am literally getting ready to upload my first – it’s a GTW recording that I’ll make available to the webinar customers & to future customers. I’m planning to upload it to my host server & create a unique directory that will hold this & future videos.

My questions:
1. If I used Lead Player instead, does this mean I’d upload it to Lead Player instead? And then the LP would give me a link so I could embed it on my blog page?
2. Is there a file size limit to the upload? For example, webinar recordings are about an hour long.
3. What kind of file works best? mp4? .mov? .wmv? Something else? )
4. If I use LP, then I wouldn’t need to use Vimeo or Audio Acrobat or my web host?

Thank you. I’m a fan of both Danny & Clay — I remember Clay’s Lead Bright launch earlier this year.

1.) If you used LeadPlayer instead, you’d upload it to YouTube and use LeadPlayer to play the videos. Why will LeadPlayer play the video if you upload it to YouTube?

2.) Nope. No file limit. You’ll need to verify your YouTube account (they’ll send you an SMS message to confirm that you’re a real person). With YouTube bandwidth is 100% free. Also, with YouTube & LeadPlayer you get “adaptive bitrate streaming” which means that a more compressed version of your video will be sent to folks with slower internet connections (and folks watching from their cell phones, etc.) while higher resolution versions will be sent to folks with faster connections.

Clay, thanks for your information & answers. So helpful. But I realized I have another question(s). For this webinar and a few others, I don’t want them to be pubicly available because I’m selling them as a product. If I upload to YouTube, I don’t have a way to make them private, do I? Also, I thought YouTube had a 10-minute limit on videos. Or has that changed. Again, thanks.

There are certainly ways to make YouTube videos private, and YouTube has lifted their length limit on videos for everyone. Anyway, while a lot of people love using LeadPlayer for membership sites, there are some things to keep in mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqsFarPWoTw

So at the end of the day, we think LeadPlayer is a great option for some folks using membership sites . . . it’s best use is for generating traffic, building lists, and increasing sales.

This sounds great, but so far I’ve been unable to watch LeadPlayer videos on my Mac. I see a black rectangle with dots going in a circle. I tried it on Firefox and on Safari with the same result, and I see plenty of people with the same problem on online forums, and no solution. I’m using a MacBook Pro with OX 10.7.5. What do I need to do to see LeadPlayer videos on my Mac?

Hi Reberto . . . sorry. There was a small problem with the CSS. Not a problem with LeadPlayer per se, but when Danny switched to the new theme some things broke. Everything 100% works now. Please clear your cache and try again. SO SORRY that this happened.

I have the same problem as Reberto – I can’t see any of the videos, just a black rectangle with circling dots. The dots stop and the rectangle stays black. Already cleared my cache several times. No joy.